Mollycoddle
by scuttlesworth
Summary: Bits of Molly. How much angst could an angsty angst angst if an angst angst could angst angst? Dunno where all the bleak came from but it all went here when it was done. Somebody needs to write this girl some happiness, stat. Ok, sorry about the chapter thing, trying to edit it to fix some spelling issues.


She knows what she wants. She always knows what she wants. And when it's a thing, something she can study for or take an exam for or work at, it's no problem. Those are easy. She just never knows how to get it, when it's people.

* * *

She's twenty-seven when she meets him. She's on call that night, has the pager. Sitting alone at home in front of the telly, with a blanket on her lap and a cuppa in her hand and Toby on her feet asleep and the pager on the end table, right nearby. Everyone complains about the pager but she's proud of it, of being trusted with the responsibility for it. She doesn't mind getting called in. She doesn't go out on the weeks she has the pager; she stays home. (She stays home on the weeks she doesn't have the pager too, but on the weeks she does have it, she has an excuse inside her head for not being out and about. For not having an exciting life. Drinks with friends. Dancing, parties, fun. Men.)

She pulls her feet out from under Toby, puts on her shoes over her fuzzy socks, pulls on her jacket and gloves. No need to really dress nicely, not this late at night on a Friday; no-one important will be there at the morgue. Just the attendants bringing in the body, and they all know her.

It's late and the streets busy with people out ringing. She looks at them from a distance, sometimes wondering if she'll see them later on. Undress them, measure them, draw their blood and urine. Put a little wire around their toe and slide them into her refrigerator to wait. She wishes they were more considerate, the kids out there getting drunk; half the time they come in wearing their own vomit.

The EMT's are there and so is a tired policeman. He's got the paperwork. He offers to help her roll the body in, but she smiles nervously and declines; the chief Pathologist is a bit of a stickler, she says, and takes the head of the gurney firmly. The metal rails are cold. This is her job, and she doesn't like giving over any part of it.

The policeman follows her down to the morgue, chatting along the way. Telling her a bit about the corpse. Murder victim, he says glumly. Oh, busy day for you then, she says, and he nods. Weird one, and there's a funny grimace on his face. Expecting a bit of, um, assistance. He glances at her apologetically. As though he's sorry for someone else being murdered. Or for requiring assistance. Silly.

He asks her to hold off on undressing the corpse, and she's surprised. He apologizes again and she shakes her head. It's no problem, she says, I wasn't doing anything anyways. She blushes. She knows she sounds pathetic. She hates speaking to people; she always says just exactly the wrong thing, something to make herself sound strange or mousy or stupid, stupid, stupid. She continues speaking anyways: Just watching telly.

He buys her a tea, a truly terrible one from the machine. As a way to make up for it, although really, that tea is more of a punishment than a present. She sips it anyways, courteously. It's a nice gesture; some of the other police aren't nearly as thoughtful.

And then the doors burst open and a tall man strides in and fills the room. Right, he says, tell me everything. And then he doesn't listen to a word the policeman says as he goes over the body, over every inch and she hasn't really even looked at the body herself yet but this man's focus is so intense it draws her like a whirlpool, until she's staring at the dead man on her slab with a new fascination, even though she doesn't have the faintest clue what she's looking for.

There's more, much more, but she doesn't hear a word. And then he's blowing out the doors like a storm, and the policeman is gripping her arm sympathetically. Always like that, the policeman says, and his eyes are very kind. And then he's gone too and she's left alone with a corpse for company and the impression that her life has just been turned over and _shaken_.

* * *

She wants him to notice her.

She wants to be near him. She wants him to see her, really see her. Except, when he does, her mind goes white like a blank sheet of paper and she fumbles. And it's excruciating, it really is, how can anyone take her seriously, never mind someone like him? She wishes she were someone else. Someone taller, braver, more beautiful. Someone who could wear elegant clothing as though it fit, someone who could wear high heels and not trip, someone who had a better voice. Someone never awkward, someone who always knew what to say. Instead it takes all her courage to put on the lipstick and her hands shake and she feels obvious and embarrassed and he notices, points it out, dismisses it. And when she wipes it off he notices that too but there's nothing behind the observation, it's cold, she doesn't feel as though his attention has made her happy; she feels as though someone just pushed her off a cliff and into a river.

But she tries and tries and tries. And she thinks if she can ever stand it, every hold her own when he looks at her, then nothing will ever frighten her again.

She berates herself afterwards, alone, walking down the hallways. Silently in her head, a litany of Idiots and Useless and Stupids run through her mind until she's thinking about home again and then she turns it off and thinks, very deliberately, about Toby and her flat and her job and her pager and all the good things in her life. Reprogramming, she thinks. She won't be that girl anymore. She's an adult and she's free and she won't ever be that girl ever again.

* * *

He gets things from her. Bits of corpse that no-one will ever miss; it's because he has the authority of the police behind him, she tells herself, because he's official and important and doing good work and it's not entirely a lie, even though it's risking everything she's proud of - her schooling for just this job, she could be fired, really she could and with no references nobody would take her on and her whole life is on the line and she does it anyways. Because he won't get her into trouble. Because she's useful. And if she can't be anything else for him, she'll bloody well be that.

* * *

Distraction. There's her desperation and then there's real life, and never the twain have overlapped until now. Now, well. There's someone else. (It doesn't mean she wants Sherlock any less, of course, but. But he's not hers might never be hers probably she's realistic never ever could be and this one, this one might be. Truly. Hers.) Her computer breaks and he's there, sitting in her chair. A sweet boy, nice, good-looking, fun. Charming, cute, popular - and he likes _her_. Her, Molly Hooper, dull girl. She's never been liked by the pretty popular crowd. Her sense of humor is all wrong, her timing is always all wrong, she doesn't wear the right clothes or watch the right shows or go to the right coffee shops. She's never had anyone flirt with her before, not like this. She goes home humming. She has a date.

She doesn't mean to be catty. She's not really trying to show him off to Sherlock, or show Sherlock off to him. She doesn't want to incite jealousy, not really, it's just - she's aware that it could look like that but really, she isn't about to hide her boyfriend from the world, is she? So he turns up and they meet and Sherlock is - Sherlock is never wrong. Sherlock is an utter _wanker_. Why couldn't he be wrong? She was so happy. Someone liked her. Someone thought she was special. Said so. Someone who was, could have been, the possibility -

Someone lied, apparently, and she should expect that by now. Why did Jim have to go and leave his phone number?

Why did Sherlock have to be so bloody attractive, anyways? If Jim had never met Sherlock maybe he'd have…

_Nevermind, Molly m'girl. There's others. There's someone just for you somewhere waiting. _

They break up.

* * *

Christmas is a disaster. The kiss on the cheek, chaste and sweet, does not make it any better. Social humiliation never gets any easier, no matter how old you get or how often you experience it.

* * *

She's given up on him. On Sherlock. He's not capable of giving her anything more than anything, and that's becoming a bittersweet ache in her chest. Because even if she's never going to be someone special to him, never going to be dear to him, never going to be drawn along in the whirlwind or tugged by his hand - even if all of that is never going to occur, still. Still she gets to help, a bit. Still, her life is better for knowing him. He lights everyone he knows on fire, and most people only get that once or twice (and often at a rather horrid crime scene, she thinks prosaically) - and she gets it about once a week - once a month if she's not lucky - and that's something special. She's lucky, and she knows it.

So when she sees it, it's difficult. _Smoking, he's smoking and she's seven and she knows it's bad because he said so before he started coughing. _She watches so carefully. _She's nine and cleaning his catheter for him because he can't quite see it himself. You've got right delicate hands, Molly m'girl. _Really observes. _Twelve. Remission. _Because she doesn't want to be right. _Fifteen. Coughing again. Blood on the tissues. _Because it's Sherlock, and Sherlock acting like this is terrifying _Sixteen. Daddy I know it hurts but why would you ask me that to do **that** no how could you you'll get better you'll be fine how could you ask me how_ and she really _relief it wasn't me_ really _relief it's over_ really wants to be wrong.

_Daddy. It wasn't me. It wasn't any of the others, they're not strong enough. The policeman said it was an accident. But. _

But she's not.

_Don't believe in heaven anymore because if you did that, easy way cheat quit left if it wasn't an accident then _enough. Reprogramming. Out with the old. Think of ways to help.

Sherlock. Help Sherlock. The dead are long past anything you can do. Long past you failing them.

For all she's been impressed with Sherlock, with his perception dan observation, she's wiser now. Now she knows that for every hundred things he sees there are a thousand things he misses. So she stops, and tries to explain. To talk to him. And he doesn't listen until he needs something, of course, because that's just how he works; need is what drives him. Need drives everything he does, every word he says and every gesture; the need to be right, the need to move, the need to solve. Nothing so small and simple as wanting, for him. It's why she had such a crush to begin with; the idea of being needed was so seductive, it blinded her to reality for a good long time. But she's over that.

Over it, oh yes, until he does need her. And then it's nothing like her dreams, because it's for real and far more terrifying. There's nothing romantic about real life, after all. No. Real life is testing the blood to be sure it's not got Hep C. Real life is sneaking and terrified and knowing that she might not just get fired, no, she could get killed if this goes wrong. Real life is doing it anyways, because. Because it's Sherlock. And she believes in him, even when everything is going to hell. The whole world has gone mad and it's not him taking her hand, it's her taking his, and some part of her thinks that if this were different it would want to wriggle with glee but there's so many consequences, and so much pain to come.

There's no joy in this. But there's cold satisfaction - instead of just, just cleaning up dead people, just tidying up the mess - instead of coming in after it all she's saving lives. Saving the lives of people she knows. It's better, right? Making sure something bad never happens instead of cleaning up when it already has? This is a step in the right direction. But it hurts, it's hurting everyone. Surgeon, she thinks. Like John, you have to cut to cure. She will be reliable. She will.

After it's done, after the funeral, she cries. Alone in the morgue, the next time she has to draw blood from a dead man. Her tears drop down onto his bare pasty white torso with its flabby gut and little mat of hair, and sparkle there. It's relief: this one is already past any more pain. She can't hurt him. Can't fix him. Not even a chance. Hope, she thinks, mopping her face after and returning to where the needle is sticking out of his chest, hope hurts most of all.

She helped. Really. It all worked out because of her. And she hopes that she never, ever, ever has to do anything like it again.


End file.
